Take a look at the picture above. Is it an all too familiar environment? This is the abyss of productivity, where time that could be spent doing something useful goes to die.
Yes, people, I’m talking about the meeting room. Or conference room. Wherever you hold meetings.
I was already not a big fan of meetings, but after reading Timothy Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Workweek, I have grown to hate them even more. In meetings, little is ever accomplished. It’s been my experience that meetings are really more like time set aside for co-workers to whine and vent. I guess it’s cheaper than therapy. You could disguise it as “team building exercise”.
Ferriss gives some great tips for getting out of meetings, and perhaps I should look into implementing them. As Ferriss says, in today’s always-connected world, what you feel can be accomplished in a meeting can usually be accomplished over email. I understand that you lose the face-to-face, but how many of your decisions truly require face-to-face? How many are truly that important? If every decision is that important (or a superior believes it is), it sounds as if the office culture might be a problem.
I was having a conversation with an associate about how unproductive most meetings are, and she agreed. But she asked why I thought people insisted on having meetings anyway. And my logic is this: I feel that meetings are a socially acceptable way to be unproductive and to kill time. If you sit in your office doing nothing, you’re stealing time from your employer. But if you’re wasting that time in a meeting, you’re doing some “extreme problem-solving”.
Perception, people! Perception is reality!
How do you feel about meetings? Do you agree with me? Am I way off-base? Let me know!
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